St. Crispin's Asylum

March 2010

St Crispins was a large psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Duston in Northamptonshire, England. Before the opening of the St Crispin Hospital in 1876, the paupers of Northampton were admitted to the Northampton General Asylum to the East of Northampton. With the Lunacy Commission pushing for every county to have their own asylum and not send paupers out to other Asylums, this arrangement was deemed unworthy and the county encourage to build their own premises. The county purchased land at the small village of Berrywood, and the asylum was founded shortly after in 1873 and was designed by Robert Griffiths. The construction took three years and was opened in 1876 to the paupers who were living interned at the Northampton General Asylum. The hospital finally closed in 1995 and the buildings are currently standing derelict with only one of the wards having been converted. A housing estate has been built on the lands that were cleared around the main building and a new mental health facility is being built on part of the site. As with many of these buildings, the developer has built a large number of new homes on the site and not concentrated on preserving the listed buildings

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